Secret Weapon Labs

Design, Code, Business, FileMaker, Simplicity, and more.

Archive for April, 2005

Da Vinci, Dan Brown, Cryptography, and Security

By Emile • Apr 27th, 2005 • Category: Blogging, Design, General

For some reason, such things all ways seem to stumble upon my lap in the few moments I do have to breathe and relax and actually PUT THE COMPUTER DOWN. Thanks to the online shenanigans of Matt Mullenweg (aka The Godfather of Wordpress), I was sucked into the online world of The Da Vinci […]



And The Oscar Goes To: “The Silence Of The Blog”

By Emile • Apr 26th, 2005 • Category: Blogging, Design, General

There are strange and funny things that happens when Google suddenly REALLY likes your blog/site. In the midst of doing some refinement on Elvgren, Taft, iRent, and a yet to be announced FileMaker product, suddenly everyone in the US needs help managing and getting up to speed with their new iPod. We’ve been […]



Spammers On The Prowl

By Emile • Apr 22nd, 2005 • Category: Blogging, General

Anyone with a Wordpress 1.5 Dashboard was sure to notice the post from Weblog Tools with regard to “Spammers Getting Braver”. I would personally choose the word audacious or ballsy, but nonetheless, the post links to the ramblings of K-Squared whereby one of the bloggers was spammed by someone pretending to be the proprietor of […]



Apple Security: A Primer

By Emile • Apr 18th, 2005 • Category: Uncategorized

In browsing the developer side of the Apple site, most especially the recently revamped Reference Library, I came across a section devoted to security on the Apple platform. I imagine this will become a much deeper part of the site as Apple makes strides into government sales with Xserve and Xsan (see the Certifications […]



Mac OS X 10.4 for $94.99

By Emile • Apr 14th, 2005 • Category: General

I recently received an email from Amazon.com noting their promotion of Apple’s latest operating system, OS X 10.4, and offering it at $94.99 and thus a substantial discount from Apple’s $129 starting price. If you’re really cheap (I would do this if I could stand the torment of not being the first to have […]



The Themes: I haven’t forgotten

By Emile • Apr 14th, 2005 • Category: Blogging, General

It would seem like I’ve dropped off the face of the Earth, but truth be told I’ve been re-engorging myself in the Wordpress theme architecture for a couple of reasons:

To produce decent code that validates
To come up with some aesthetic enhancements and refinements to the Elvgren and Taft UIs
To see how far I can push […]



IRS Cheat Codes

By Emile • Apr 13th, 2005 • Category: General

This is random enough, but the cartoon is hysterical and certainly worth checking out. It REALLY is too bad Turbo Tax or the IRS site don’t have such features…
http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2005/04/13/daily-div-1/
Tags: cartoons | taxes | digital |



Technorati Tags: Yay, I finally GET them !

By Emile • Apr 13th, 2005 • Category: Blogging, Design, General

Wow, it took long enough and, amazingly, it doesn’t seem like this feature is built-in to Wordpress, but given Wordpress’ extensible and open source nature, I found a customization/hack (though, I really wouldn’t call it a ‘hack’ per se) to Wordpress that produces the perfect code for Technorati tags within the Wordpress post publishing interface. […]



Spyware and The Vatican

By Emile • Apr 11th, 2005 • Category: General

Who would think that the passing of the Pope (I know, I’m nearly tired of hearing about it as well) would somehow bridge into technology and security, but according to this report on CNN.com, the Vatican is taking extra precautionary steps to make sure that the discussions of the next papal successor do not go […]



Mac OS X Trojan Threat

By Emile • Apr 9th, 2005 • Category: Uncategorized

In keeping track of the pulse of the Mac OS X Security updates, I recently found c/o Wishingline.com which found a security bug c/o Security Focus, a recent discovery of a possible exploit in OS X whereby a user can gain Admin access. I’ve quoted the post below:

The Bug
The bug involves an application gaining […]